A Mathematician's Apology

A Mathematician's Apology

Language: English

Pages: 74

ISBN: 1987817451

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub

A Mathematician's Apology is the famous essay by British mathematician G. H. Hardy. It concerns the aesthetics of mathematics with some personal content, and gives the layman an insight into the mind of a working mathematician. Indeed, this book is often considered one of the best insights into the mind of a working mathematician written for the layman.

difficult to define. It has something to do with difficulty; the ‘deeper’ ideas are usually the harder to grasp: but it is not at all the same. The ideas underlying Pythagoras’s theorem and its generalization are quite deep, but no mathematicians now would find them difficult. On the other hand a theorem may be essentially superficial and yet quite difficult to prove (as are many ‘Diophantine’ theorems, i.e. theorems about the solution of equations in integers). It seems that mathematical ideas

material well-being and 15 I believe that it is now regarded as a merit in a problem that there should be many variations of the same type. 30 comfort of men, if it promotes happiness, using that word in a crude an commonplace way. Thus medicine and physiology are useful because they relieve suffering, and engineering is useful because it helps us to build houses and bridges, and so to raise the standard of life (engineering, of course, does harm as well, but that is not the question at the

mathematics of Fermat and Euler and Gauss and Abel and Riemann, is almost wholly ‘useless’ (and this is as true of ‘applied’ as of ‘pure’ mathematics). It is not possible to justify the life of any genuine professional mathematician on the ground of the ‘utility’ of his work. But here I must deal with a misconception. It is sometimes suggested that pure mathematicians glory in the uselessness of their work16, and make it a boast that it has no practical applications. The imputation is usually

value will turn the scale in a man’s choice of a career, which will almost always be dictated by the limitations of his natural abilities. Poetry is more valuable than cricket, but Bradman would be a fool if he sacrificed his cricket in order to write second-rate minor poetry (and I suppose that it is unlikely that he could do better). If the cricket were a little less supreme, and the poetry better, then the choice might be more difficult: I do not know whether I would rather have been Victor

ambition, desire for reputation, and the position, even the power or the money, which it brings. It may be fine to feel, when you have done your work, that you have added to the happiness or alleviated the sufferings of others, but that will not be why you did it. So if a mathematician, or a chemist, or even a physiologist, were to tell me that the driving force in his work had been the desired to benefit humanity, then I should not believe him (nor should I think the better of him if I did). His